In the production of cigars, a core is usually provided. In practice, the core is formed either of small tobacco pieces or whole tobacco leaves bunched in a longitudinal direction. These cores are usually wrapped with a binder and then spirally wrapped by an elongated sheet, known as a "wrapper". The cigar wrapper is formed by cutting a given profile from a tobacco sheet product. In some instances, a wrapper is cut from a synthetic tobacco sheet. However, it is desirable to provide a natural tobacco leaf as the outer cigar wrapper to present an appealing appearance which facilitates marketing of the finished cigar. It is essential for a quality cigar that a natural tobacco leaf be used for the outer wrapper and that the finished cigar have no noticeable defect, such as a hole, a color variation, an edge portion of the leaf, or a stem. Indeed, certain unduly noticeable heavy veins should not be incorporated into a wrapper for a quality cigar. All of these concepts in wrapper selection are essential in the marketing of a cigar in the very competitive cigar industry. The wrapper is important in determining the overall visual concept that a purchaser forms regarding the quality of the cigar. Consequently, the wrapper must have an appearance that imparts an impression of quality to the resulting cigar.
As is well known in the cigar industry, the wrapper, which is helically disposed in overlapping fashion around the cigar, must also have a smooth outer appearance which is somewhat difficult to obtain since the shape of the cigar often varies along its length. For that reason, the wrapper must be cut in a complex shape and must be accurately spiraled around the cigar core and/or binder to produce the desired smooth outer appearance. This requirement, combined with the demand for a cigar wrapper with no surface defects, has made one of the more critical aspects of cigar making the system by which the cigar wrapper is cut from a natural tobacco leaf. This system is made quite complex by the fact that each natural tobacco leaf has different surface variations which must be excluded from a wrapper.
Due to the extreme criticality in producing quality cigar wrappers for use in cigar manufacturing, the wrappers are generally cut by a manual orienting procedure that has not changed substantially over the years. The process requires a skilled operator who manually orients a half of a leaf formed by removing the center stem. This leaf portion or half is examined for holes, coarse veins, or other visible imperfections on one surface. After this inspection, the leaf portion is usually spread onto a cutting surface including a cutting die surrounded by perforated surfaces through which vacuum can be applied to the spread leaf. The leaf is manually positioned over the cutting die to insure that the outline of the die, which has the shape of the cigar wrapper, does not include an edge portion or any other visible surface imperfection in the natural tobacco leaf. After this placement has been made, the vacuum is applied to hold the leaf in place on the cutting surface. A roller is forced over the leaf and cuts out a leaf portion determined by the profile of the cutter over which the leaf was positioned. After a first cut has been made, the vacuum is released, the wrapper is removed and the cut tobacco portion is again oriented by the operator for a second cut from the leaf half, if a second cut is possible without including any surface imperfection. The wrapper has an elongated shape and the leaf veins must have a predetermined diagonal orientation in the wrapper. Consequently, the general disposition of the wrapper cut must be generally parallel to the original stem of the natural tobacco leaf within a few degrees, such as 10.degree.-15.degree.. In this manner, the veins, which are found on the leaf, will have the proper pattern when the wrapper is spirally wound around the core and/or binder to form a finished cigar. This process of manually orienting and then cutting is continued until no other wrapper can be cut from a leaf half. At this time, the leaf is removed from the cutting station for use in other tobacco products or discarded. Other procedures are used in the tobacco industry for producing the cigar wrappers. This particular description is representative in that each of the procedures involves manual manipulation of a leaf or a leaf half into a particular position wherein a cut is made in the natural tobacco leaf so as to avoid surface imperfections. In all instances, an operator, who must be skilled and highly trained, is required for the production of a quality wrapper produced from a natural tobacco leaf. In practice, the cost of producing the quality wrapper is a relatively high proportion of the cigar manufacturing costs in that the remainder of the cigar making process is generally mechanized and can be accomplished at relatively high processing speeds.
In view of this, there is a substantial demand for an arrangement wherein the cigar wrapper can be cut from a tobacco leaf in a high speed operation involving no manual manipulation without sacrificing the high quality required for the production of such wrappers. The advantage to the cigar manufacturing process of avoiding, or reducing, the manual manipulation required in producing the cigar wrappers is well known in the industry.
Before the leaves are stacked for use by an operator, the heavy stem or mid-rib of each tobacco leaf is removed. Each resulting half of the leaf is then "booked" in a separate pile for use in the cutting operation. Since the veins in the leaf extend diagonally in different general directions with respect to the stem, one half of the leaf is used for one cigar making machine and the other half of the leaf is used for another cigar making machine. This prevents mixing of wrappers from both leaf halves so that the diagonal veins within the cigar wrapper are uniform for each run of cigars. If whole leaves were provided to the operator for manual orientation and cutting, the cut wrappers could have different vein patterns unless the operator exercised extreme care and attention. Such mixing of vein patterns would not be acceptable in the production of cigars. The wrappers must be consistent in the orientation of the vein angles. Consequently, not only have prior arrangements for cutting cigar wrappers required manual manipulation, but they have required stemming of the tobacco leaf and grouping the leaves in "booked" and matched halves for use in a particular tobacco wrapping machine. Stemming, booking and other controls have increased the cost of wrappers without increasing their quality. All of these disadvantages are known in the cigar industry and attempts have been made to correct one or more of the various disadvantages experienced in the previously used arrangements for producing cigar wrappers from natural tobacco leaves.
The most common approach to solving the problems in cutting wrappers has been to mechanize or increase the speed of the cutting operation and the wrapper transfer operation. Such a concept is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,591,044. This patent is incorporated herein by reference for background information only. Such an arrangement increases production by an operator, but it does not solve the basic problems involved in the efficient production of a wrapper from a natural tobacco leaf. Manual manipulation or orientation, stemming and booking of leaf halves are still required. This was the background situation presented when the present novel system was developed to cut cigar wrappers from natural tobacco leaves.